2023, Adieu: Don't Know if I'll Miss You

I’m not sure if we can blame 2020 for giving us a permanent feeling that twenty-twenty-anything was a terrible year. But, since that was the year of lockdowns, murder hornets, impeachment, riots, and for those of you going for a full card in Doom Bingo fire-nados, I think it’s safe to say 2020 was a true milestone of misery. On the plus side, we did get pretty close to a real Christmas Star on December 21 that year.

So in keeping with that tradition, it seems a lot of people think 2023 was a terrible year too but I have decided we can't blame the calendar for bad times. I think social and mainstream media just keeps feeding us all the ugly news we can swallow, and we run with it every year. Seriously, right out of the gate in 2023, an NFL player had a heart attack on national television.

Some things did start out pretty good. The entire country united behind a billion-dollar-plus lottery in January, and two more billion-plus jackpots over the summer. Definitely feel-good news, even if only three people really got to enjoy it.

Artificial Intelligence got a ton of attention this year so now we can not only complain about fake news but now we can make fun of people who get busted for “faked” news. Sure, A.I. motivated a lot of companies to completely re-think their entire tech strategy but it was also amusing to see everyone from public universities to Sports Illustrated getting dinged for publishing stories by imaginary writers.

Some think it was a bad year because of all the celebrities who died. My Gen-X friends certainly mourned Marty Krofft...without whom we would never have met Sleestaks or mean sea-brothers, Blurp and Slurp. We also lost Suzanne Somers, Dick Butkus, Michael Gambon, Jimmy Buffett, Cindy Williams, Paul Reubens, and Tony Bennett. While I'm still not over losing Matthew Perry, I know many will agree with me that one of the best things about staying home sick from school was Bob Barker on "The Price is Right" so he was a big loss too. Still, I hate to be a jerk about it, but famous people die every year, so it’s not 2023’s fault. Are we still mad at 1977 for killing Elvis?

Politics did not disappoint this year. Our president got another year older and provided us with plenty of gaffes and word salads so I would say "yay, 2023 is over" but he's just going to get another year older in 2024. Plus, I know how excited we *all* are that 2024 will be chock full of debates and robocalls asking for campaign donations every day. Yay.

Also in 2023, I decided the job I am most qualified for is head football coach at Texas A&M. Where else can you do your job badly for a few years, get fired, and walk away with $75 million?

You probably didn’t see much about the European Space Agency heading to Jupiter's moons to look for signs of life and India's picture-perfect landing on the south pole of the moon. But, naturally, we did have to watch a Chinese "weather balloon" for six days that may or may not have been looking for signs of life on military installations across the United States.

In other lives of privilege, I still love Elon Musk. Seriously, wouldn't we all like to have so much money we could tell Disney and Apple to 'self-reproduce' to their face, and still have enough money and status left over to help rebuild a whole country in the Middle East?

How could we be mad at a year that saw Mexico turn away from Acapulco hurricane victims and focus on fake Peruvian extraterrestrials. We also managed to prove that a perfect clock will never be possible. If I understood quantum computing, I might even know why that is important.

So I guess we’ve had better years. Farewell year of nurses' strikes, Hollywood strikes, we-can't-decide-whothe-House-Speaker-should-be, Susan Meachen faking her own death to sell books, Putin's 24th year in charge, Boomers vs. Zoomers, and George Santos.

With all that said, I am actually still mad at 2016 for killing Alan Rickman.